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Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

economist.com

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Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#101

Post by empath-nirvana »

xpe wrote: post #77
mistersquid wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not eating and getting low blood sugar can much more simply answer the question of "Do I have free will, or am I a subject of my internal chemical reactions". You cannot control what you feel, but you can control your actions.

> You cannot control what you feel, but you can control your actions. I'll respond in a way that I hope is clear and relatively objective. This will take the form of an "if-then" claim nested within another "if-then" claim. IF a person (1) accepts philosophical materialism, but (2) remains agnostic as to quantum effects at macro scale THEN then the following response follows logically: It depends what you mean by "yo…

I think there's two conceptions of free will, one is as you described -- a body being able to act in and of itself without any influence of an external force (beyond sensation, physical constraints, etc).

That sort of punts on the question of physical determinism, where it doesn't matter if it was possible for you to have done anything other than what you did. You could be a pure clock work automaton making deterministic responses to external stimuli and still have that sort of "free will", but I don't think that would be satisfying to a lot of people.

The second kind of free will, I think would be the ability to have a free choice -- that there is some immaterial entity which can act in somehow a non-deterministic way to choose its behavior, that the course of your entire life wasn't set at the big bang -- that not only can you act independently, but that your choices _matter_ and will result in a future that was not predetermined. I think that is what a lot of people would think of as free will, and it's difficult to define or logically support IMO.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#102

Post by ericskiff »

0ccupied wrote: post #80
ericskiff wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realized I didn’t finish the story on this comment. 5 years later, our son’s recovery is a daily miracle. He’s a happy, healthy 13 year old with only a shadow of his former symptoms. We were able to achieve symptom reduction through long course antibiotics, inflammation reduction supplements and medications (Tylenol and steroid bursts), and eventually having his tonsil’s out. After that we would have done IVIG if n…

What inflammation reduction supplements did you use?

Turmeric extract (ehanza), vitamin-d, omega, and Advil during flares.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#104

Post by M1ch431 »

notamy wrote: post #84
badcppdev wrote: post #8

This is sad: "years spent campaigning to get doctors to take the illnesses seriously." It's like that saying, "Capitalism: The worst economic system, except for all the others". Our medical system where we rely on individual doctors for primary care is really flawed but it's better than any alternatives that we have (or that we can afford anyway)

> or that we can afford anyway That’s the big one in my experience. Functional medicine doctors are some miracle workers, but only if you can afford hundreds of dollars per visit / thousands of dollars in lab tests that insurance will never pay for.

I recommend you check out the Direct Primary Care model and share your thoughts. This model is not to be confused with Concierge Medicine, which largely suffers from the same problems you identified about Functional Medicine doctors. I just commented about DPC, you can find my thoughts about it at the top of my profile.

Overall, I think this is a great, affordable first step for redefining primary care - one that makes sense for doctors and patients, but is not a replacement for specialties like Functional Medicine.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#105

Post by dosplatos »

Not the happiest news I've read (and somewhat poorly written for a paywalled article).

Don't viruses and bacteria alter genetic expression? Usually it's just hijacking certain cellular organelles to replicate, but it makes sense this or other processes could trigger genetic expressions with longer lasting affects.

Really unfortunate to think that it's some sort of dice roll when you catch an infection.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#106

Post by gejose »

thenerdhead wrote: post #16

> Dr Pittenger says it is now clear that covid-19 infections can trigger psychosis, fatigue and other neuro-psychiatric symptoms. A misbehaving immune system is thought to be the culprit. The idea that schizophrenia may, at least sometimes, likewise be an auto-immune disorder is also under investigation. Until I got long covid(generally recovered now after 2 years), I couldn't comprehend this idea. I felt like I was…

The parent comment mentions Robert Sapolsky and I can't resist linking a talk where he explores various physical and environmental factors that influence human actions - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRYcSuyLiJk

If anyone finds the video above interesting, also check out his Behavioural Biology lecture series on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C...

His upcoming book can be found here - https://www.amazon.ca/Determined-Science-Life-without-Free/d...

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#107

Post by xpe »

empath-nirvana wrote: post #101
xpe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot control what you feel, but you can control your actions. I'll respond in a way that I hope is clear and relatively objective. This will take the form of an "if-then" claim nested within another "if-then" claim. IF a person (1) accepts philosophical materialism, but (2) remains agnostic as to quantum effects at macro scale THEN then the following response follows logically: It depends what you mean by "yo…

I think there's two conceptions of free will, one is as you described -- a body being able to act in and of itself without any influence of an external force (beyond sensation, physical constraints, etc). That sort of punts on the question of physical determinism, where it doesn't matter if it was possible for you to have done anything other than what you did. You could be a pure clock work automaton making determini…

I can appreciate a lot of the sentiments above, but I don't think the comment's "two conceptions" really 'decomplects' (a Hickeyism) the key ideas. If anything, it smooshes a lot of them together: different definitions of free will, meaning, origin stories, the divine, flavors of determinism, and more.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#108

Post by CuriouslyC »

exolymph wrote: post #62
thenerdhead wrote: post #16

> Dr Pittenger says it is now clear that covid-19 infections can trigger psychosis, fatigue and other neuro-psychiatric symptoms. A misbehaving immune system is thought to be the culprit. The idea that schizophrenia may, at least sometimes, likewise be an auto-immune disorder is also under investigation. Until I got long covid(generally recovered now after 2 years), I couldn't comprehend this idea. I felt like I was…

Nerd-sniped: Free will is an incoherent idea. We don't choose our preferences, which dictate our choices. (And even supposing you can choose a preference, that's only due to the preexisting desire to have such a preference. Turtles all the way down.) What would an unconstrained choice even be? Just random, arbitrary? That doesn't sound "free" either.

The idea isn't incoherent so much as the word free invites a lot of creative interpretations.

Free will is really all about making decisions that guide the evolution of the universe, rather than being a powerless observer. The fact that our decisions are constrained due to circumstances does not change the fact that we make them.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#109

Post by fidrelity »

xpe wrote: post #85
pixl97 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you? I'm a type 1 diabetic, I have a continuous monitor that tells me what my glucose level is. This monitors actual interstitial fluid level and not blood sugar, this means there can be a pretty large delay between what's measured just under the skin versus what my blood stream is experiencing. If a rapid drop occurs there can be a lead time that I'm unaware of it, but others are because I'll behave in a 'cranky…

Well said. > You are in far less control of your actions then you believe. No. But I say this in a way that might surprise you? I view 'free will', as most people understand it, as an illusion. I recognize that I, at best, have a tiny fraction of control. If I consider "me" to be a locus of control w.r.t. volitional action, then I will grant that "me" has causal impact. But what causally impacted "me" at time t? A co…

I consider free will fundamentally an illusion but at the abstraction level of 'me' (also a faulty abstraction) it does make sense to use these concepts sometimes.

But it's important not to confuse the map with the territory.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#110

Post by dylan604 »

elwell wrote: post #92
dylan604 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is stated as if religion has never had it's own pseudo-science/medicine beliefs that conflicted with actual issues. "we don't know what's going on, so it must be a possession" type of things when it could have been something more more like schizophrenia or some other medical condition.

> "we don't know what's going on, so it must be a possession" type of things when it could have been something more more like schizophrenia or some other medical condition. Maybe the spiritual representation is more 'accurate'. Is the concept of love more useful or the concept of oxytocin?

>Is the concept of love more useful or the concept of oxytocin?

are we trying to make someone feel better about themself or cure the problem?

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